


Access Granted

by stormae



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hackers, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Nightmares, mark is a soft boyf with his own issues, sort of inspired by mysme ha ha what have i come to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 13:26:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormae/pseuds/stormae
Summary: Mark had earned himself many titles in the seven years he’d been working. White hat, black hat, hacktivist, nation state, but they were all the same in essence. He was a hacker. A mere mortal that, when presented with a computer and internet connection, had superpowers.





	Access Granted

The fake marble countertop was cool against the skin of your elbows as you rested against the surface, your chin propped in the palm of you hand and your eyes focused on a hoodie-clad boy in front of you.

“Mark.”

“Hm?”

“Babe.”

“Hm?’

“Nerd.”

“Hm?”

You lobbed the closest thing your hand could find, a tiny packet of chips, at his face, startling him from the screen he had been so absorbed in.

“I knew you weren’t listening,” you accused, “you never let me call you nerd.”

He stood from his perch on the kitchen stool, his tall, lean frame clothed in baggy sweatpants and a hoodie that he swam in taking away from his supposedly fearsome expression. “You called me a nerd?”

You scooted back in your chair, a cheeky smile rising on your lips as you held up your hands in mock surrender. “It doesn’t count, you didn’t hear me actually say it.”

His eyes narrowed, preparing to say something, but the laptop sitting in front of him made an alarming sound and reclaimed his attention. You saw his eyes flicker from you to the screen, and knew you’d lost him again.

That was ok, though. You scooted your stool closer to the counter again and repositioned your chin in one hand, using the other to reach across the countertop and slide your fingers over the knuckles of his unused hand, his other skimming frantically over the trackpad.

The contact distracted him once more, a smile curving onto his face that exposed all of his teeth and had him scrunching his nose. He slid his fingers between yours and dragged your hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to your cool skin before replacing your hand on the countertop and letting it go, requiring both hands for the work he was doing.

You blew a contented breath from your nose and stood from your position, shuffling your sock covered feet over the cracking linoleum to the fridge, swinging it open and letting the artificial light and soft buzzing filter through the quiet room. Without a word you retrieved the little round bottle and peeled the foil from the top, setting it down next to Mark’s laptop. You removed his hood and combed your fingers through his hair.

“Banana milk for you,” you informed him.

His eyes briefly flittered from the screen to the carton, before going back to the code on the computer that was indecipherable to your own eyes. One long arm looped around behind himself to squeeze you in a quick, grateful hug, before returning to the keyboard.

“I’m going to bed,” you informed him, the flashing digital numbers on the microwave reading almost one in the morning. Your boyfriend made another noncommittal noise, tugging the hood of his jumper further over his head and squinting at the screen. You contemplated asking him where his glasses were, but one look at the absorbed, hunched over form at the computer told you it was useless. “Don’t stay up all night.”

“Yep.”

You navigated your way through the tightly packed apartment, banging your knee against the edge of the couch as you always did when you forgot to actively pay it mind. The apartment was tiny and the farthest thing from flash, but it was clean and filled with comfortable second hand furniture and always smelled of a mixture between the candle of the moment burning on the TV cabinet and the vague scent of banana milk. It was homey and comfortable and, most importantly, inconspicuous.

What you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking around the apartment was that Mark had enough money in his bank account to support a small army for a lifetime, and he had only just turned twenty. His source of income came entirely from the laptop over which he was hunched and the keyboard across which his fingers were flying.

Mark had earned himself many titles in the seven years he’d been working. White hat, black hat, hacktivist, nation state, but they were all the same in essence. He was a hacker. A mere mortal that, when presented with a computer and internet connection, had superpowers.

Everything had not always been as peaceful for him as it was in that moment, with you thumbing through the pages of a book in bed and him perched in the kitchen, sipping on artificially flavoured milk and basking in the silence of the city during the early hours of the morning. When he was thirteen and unskilled in masking his online presence, he’d been approached by other hackers that had offered to teach him everything he needed to know.

They had certainly be knowledgeable, but they had also been filed under a category of hackers called ‘black hats,’ who infiltrated security systems illegally for malicious reasons or personal gain. They weren’t good people to associate with, and once your ID was within their systems and grasps it was a rapid downwards spiral.

By the time he was fifteen, he was old enough to properly realise what was right and wrong and which side of the spectrum he fell on, his cyber world had become a quagmire of thick mud that he would have to struggle to get out of.

Thankfully, a message appeared in the HTML code one evening, giving him the option to turn in those around him for legal immunity and opportunities to further his talent. He was the weak link of the ring of cyber criminals he’d been running with, by far the youngest and least experienced, so attempting to leave on his own would only amount to his own destruction. Having long grown uncomfortable with his ‘comrades’ and their work, he responded to the strange message in the affirmative, praying it wasn’t some sort of test of loyalty from someone within the ranks.

But seventy-two hours later everyone within the crime ring was detained and Lee Minhyung became Mark Lee, and he was officially a part of the team protecting the nation-state of South Korea against internal and external cyberthreats. It was admittedly less lucrative than when he’d been working against the law, but he felt far more at peace and the government still paid him a pretty penny for his work.

Five years later he was considered one of the best, and was in even more danger than ever. The thing about working in security and intelligence was that you were bound to run into individuals or groups that would much rather you weren’t in a position to stop them, and that was where many security and intelligence officers’ lives were cut short. Mark had figured out the mistakes that they always repeated, though. Creating too many relationships, buying too many materialistic items, living in wealthy, high profile areas in huge houses or penthouse apartments, getting too self-assured. Nothing was guaranteed in the intangible world of binary and source code. People were deleted just as easily as they were installed. Mark had seen his colleagues one evening and been informed of their demise three hours later via text, then never heard their name mentioned again.

The whole process had horrified him at first, but he soon became impervious to the remorseless world of the secrets and codes. It was useless to try and fight it, so he just did his best to remain unnoticed and do his work. If the agency let him go, he’d be done for. He had more than a few enemies waiting for him to surface.

But eight months ago one of his more outgoing (and foolish, he thought) colleagues, Kun, had invited him out for a drink after they’d successfully cracked a difficult code and retrieved intel the government had been after for months. Mark hadn’t been of age at that point, but most hackers were young and their local spot around the corner from their headquarters turned a blind-eye to IDs displaying insufficient birthdays.

Sat up at the bar with a half-empty bottle of soju, Mark had barely had the presence of mind to notice when Kun had leaned backwards and motioned for another person to come and join them. Mark chucked another shot of the alcohol down his throat before turning to take in the newcomer. He was certainly too swayed by the alcohol to notice what a bad idea the sudden and immediate stirring in his chest was.

Your cheeks were naturally flushed from the brisk air of the streets outside and you shot him and Kun a friendly smile as you removed your layers of warm clothing. Mark’s booze-affected mind couldn’t recall the last time someone had smiled at him without knowing who he was and what he was capable of—without wanting something from him. Sure, Kun had smiled at him, but he was almost always smiling in some shape or form, so it had lost meaning.

“Y/N! Glad you could make it,” Kun greeted you with enthusiasm before pushing his chair back slightly. “This is Mark, a guy I work with.”

You nodded amiably, “You’re both pretty young to be in finance. You must be really good at what you do.”

Mark’s brain was working at half-speed, resulting in nothing but a blank look. Your expression quickly morphed to confusion. “You don’t look like that’s a familiar concept to you.”

A sharp nudge from Kun pushed Mark back into gear, “Oh, yeah, sorry. It is. I’m just really out of it. Yeah, both me and Kun really have a… passion… for finance.”

You were obviously not convinced, but thankfully you let it go, accepting the bottle of soju Kun ordered for you. The three of you spent the rest of the evening downing the liquor and chatting away. Mark had never been one for words, much preferring to observe others and only speak when necessary to be polite. He was reserved by nature, but a mixture of the soju, Kun, the exhilarating high of cracking a code thought uncrackable and, in particular, you had the conversation flowing easily.

You were such a comfortable presence, so easy to divulge his hidden personality to. He wasn’t sure which aspect of the concoction was responsible, but something had him disregarding the warning bells and all of his previous experience as he swapped phone numbers with you, promising in earnest to see you again soon.

Much to Mark’s dismay, you had texted him the next day, and he was astonishingly incapable of ignoring you. Every message you sent seemed injected with happiness he didn’t want to deny, and he indulged himself in several more meetings with you, each occasion making him more excited for the next time he would get to see you.

He had enjoyed the simplicity of your relationship, choosing not to analyse the ways his emotions were growing and shifting whenever he thought about you. That pretence of simplicity was shattered when, one particularly late night at the bar, you’d pressed your lips to his.

You’d pulled away too soon, eyes examining every aspect of his face for his reaction. Finding nothing, your cheeks had alighted with embarrassed colour and you’d pushed yourself off the bar stool. “Sorry,” you’d said, tone curt, “I shouldn’t have done that without your permission. I’ll leave first.”

Before you could go far, Mark’s arm seemed to move on its own, lashing out to grab ahold of your wrist.

“No,” his voice came out embarrassingly desperate, his hoodie falling from his head at the sudden motion, “it’s…ok. It makes everything a hell of a lot more complicated, but it’s ok. I think.”

You didn’t say anything for an extended moment, before narrowing your eyes in confusion—a trait Mark had come to recognise on you. “Complicated? You think?”

Mark’s eyebrows drew together as he tried to run through all of the options he had, and each of their multiple outcomes. When you tugged your captive arm slightly, his mind cleared and he took the plunge.

“Fine,” he said, desperation replaced by determination, “come with me. I need to explain a few things.”

You’d gone back to his apartment, back then still smelling purely of artificial banana, and told you everything. What work he did, how dangerous it was, how dangerous he used to be, the consequences of making relationships and the consequences of you knowing about everything.

“Does that all make sense?” He asked tentatively, desperately trying to gauge your reaction.

It took you a moment to reply, your eyes skirting over his form and avoiding eye contact. “Yeah,” you finally said, your tone sounding noncommittal to Mark’s ears, “I think so.”

He took in your stunned expression and evasive words and felt his heart fracture a little, but knew he had to give you an out.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, recapturing your attention, “it’s totally ok for you to walk out now and pretend you never heard any of this. Taking all of this on board means… a big commitment if I’m going to keep you safe. You can leave right now if you want to.”

He couldn’t read your face, your eyes slightly vacant and your lower lip tugged between your teeth. As you stood from the measly couch and gathered your bag, he felt his heart turn to stone and sink in his chest.

“Can I get back to you in the morning?” You asked, your absent eyes alluding to your busy mind. The fracture in the stone organ deepened at the sound of your words.

“Of course,” he forced himself to say. As you flashed him a quick, grateful smile and exited the apartment, the stone shattered completely, leaving his insides riddled with sharp fragments of rock that cut him up every time he took a breath. He’d ruined everything.

Sleep didn’t come easily to him on a normal day, so there was no chance of him getting a moment of respite that evening. He had tried to get some work done, but it had been near impossible with his preoccupied mind. He had resorted to lying on top of the covers of his bed, one arm slung over his eyes as he replayed the look on your face as you left over and over again, whether he wanted to or not.

It was a good thing, though, because if he was asleep at quarter to five in the morning, he never would have heard the frantic knocking on his door.

His immediate reaction was to wonder who the fuck was at his door at this hour. Had somebody finally found out where he lived and come to knock him off? It wasn’t an entirely unlikely scenario.

Still lying indecisively on his bed, his phone vibrated in the pocket of his jeans. Still eyeing the direction of the front door, he fished the device from his pocket and glanced at the screen.

Can you let me in?

He flung himself from the bed and almost tore the door off its hinges, torn between blinking repeatedly to test the reality of the situation and never blinking again in case you really were just a mirage.

“Y/N?”

“I said I’d text you in the morning, didn’t I?” You offered a sheepish smile.

The relief he felt in his chest was overwhelming and propelled him forwards to wrap his long arms around you and hug you tight to his chest. You reciprocated the hug, looping your own arms around his waist and pressing your face into his jumper, releasing a long breath.

That had all been almost six months ago, and you had since successfully inserted yourselves into each other’s lives. The apartment you’d been staying in near your university had been more spacious and clean than Mark’s, and things were absolutely simpler before, but you hadn’t regretted it for a moment. It put your mind at ease to know how much or little he was eating and sleeping, and it comforted him to know that you were safe.

—

You and Mark were interrupted by the distinctive sound of glass shattering and a harsh voice muttering a string of curses. The noises came from behind the closed bedroom door, alerting the pair of you to an intruder.

Without a word, Mark opened one of the kitchen cupboards and extracted a Magnum, checking the magazine for the needed bullets and flicking the safety off. Although you knew he had guns hidden throughout the apartment, you’d never seen him handle one before. Looking at him, drowning in an oversized hoodie, sweatpants barely staying up around his slim hips and his hair in disarray, you couldn’t reconcile the soft image you had of him with the deftness with which he handled the gun.

The door of your bedroom burst open, the top hinge detaching and leaving the door hanging at an angle from the frame. A man with indistinct features and clothed in black rushed towards the pair of you, each movement blurred and hard to follow. You saw Mark raise the gun from the corner of your eye and noticed his index finger tighten around the trigger, but before the bullet could fire from the barrel there was the sound of a shot, and you felt an impact in the right side of your chest.

The room faded from view, the only things you were conscious of being the quasi-pain in your chest and the feeling of Mark’s arms around you.

You woke to the sensation of a film of sweat coating your skin and the weight of an arm slung across your hips.

You sat upright, eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room. The clock on your bedside informed you that it was almost six am. Looking to your left you found Mark sprawled on his front, out to the world with his arm loosely holding you against the bed.

Your breath rattled in your throat as you gently nudged his sleeping form. You felt guilty for disturbing the precious few moments of sleep that he managed to get, given he had probably only come to bed not long ago, but you could still feel the ghost of the bullet in your chest. He stirred quickly, always a light sleeper, and blinked blearily at you.

“Babe?” Upon taking in your shaky form, he sat upright and tugged you into his lap, hands fretting over your shoulders. He was always very caring, but could be awkward with emotionally rich moments like these. “What’s up? Bad dream?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, feeling stupid for waking him, but knowing you owed it to him to divulge the details now that he was awake and concerned. “Somebody… broke in. They were targeting you, I’m sure, but I got in the way.” You placed a hand over the place where the sensation still lingered, “I got… shot.”

His arms tightened perceptibly around you, his lips pressing against the bare skin of your shoulder.

“It’s ok,” he mumbled, his words vibrating against your flesh and spreading comfort from that point of contact throughout your body. “Back to sleep. Few more hours,” he muttered, his sentences shortening as sleep clawed him back. He lay down flat, pulling you with him and holding your head against his chest, forcing you to listen to the slow, steady beating of his heart until you descended into a more peaceful, dreamless sleep.

—

You woke the next day to abrasive sunlight intruding into the bedroom and a cold left side of the bed. A check of the phone told you it was almost midday—not a surprise considering your sleeping habits on your free days. Mark rarely slept more than four or five hours, so it was not unusual for you to wake up without him there, but you could normally hear the sounds of his feet shuffling around in the crappy kitchen or his fingers on the keyboard. The silence was telling.

You clambered from bed, shoved your feet unceremoniously into a pair of slides and traipsed from the room, expecting to see him slumped at the counter, taking an exhausted nap.

The kitchen was empty, however, and so was the living room. Not only was the apartment absent of Mark (a rarity in itself), it was also absent of any of his hacking tech.

Your pulse spiked, your mind immediately grappling with the worst case scenario. You reeled yourself in, though, and tried to inject a dose of rationality into your thought process. If he had enough time to take all of his stuff, he was fine. Gone, but fine.

You texted him a quick where are you? but were not surprised when after twenty minutes you still had no answer. You squashed your anxiety and decided to replace it with irritation—an easier emotion to handle. You clicked around on your phone, opening Kun’s messages and typing quickly.

Is he with you?

It took less than five minutes to feel the familiar buzzing vibration.

…

Yeah he is

You coming by?

You responded, confirming his suspicions, tugging on a pair of pants and leaving the empty apartment in an angry hurry.

By the time you arrived at the recognisable door of Kun’s apartment, your frustration was intermingled with the anxiety you had tried to banish earlier, creating a dangerously volatile mixture that had you practically fuming. Why would he disappear when you had had a nightmare about practically the same thing just hours before?

Kun swung the door open, his normally cheerful face riddled with apprehension.

“Y/N,” he greeted you carefully, eyeing your peeved expression.

“Hi,” you tried to level your voice, “can I come in and talk to him?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks,” you shot him a half-hearted smile, following him into the spacious, expensive apartment. You’d always marvelled at the huge living space, wondering how he managed to get into the financial markets so early and become so successful so quickly. You knew better, now.

Your eyes landed on Mark where he was positioned at the coffee table in the living room, noise-cancelling headphones covering his ears and his back to you.

“I’ll leave you guys,” Kun informed you, making an eager escape to his bedroom down the hall.

You took another steadying breath to dispel the unwarranted exasperation from you system and moved towards the couch, placing a hand gently on Mark’s shoulder to alert him to your presence. He jolted under you touch in surprise, twisting around and shoving his headphones from his ears.

He blinked up at you, his pink lips falling into a small ‘o’ as his eyes widened at the sight of you. “Y/N?”

“Hi,” you returned, your voice flat and openly conveying how unimpressed you were with the situation.

“What are you doing here?”

You had to prevent yourself from violently rolling your eyes at the question, settling rather for a slight scoff of disbelief. Ever perceptive, Mark noticed his blunder.

“Sorry for, uh, leaving unannounced.”

“You didn’t just leave unannounced. You snuck out. While I was asleep. It’s like I was a one night stand you were trying to ditch.” You said the last part with a hint of the familiar lighthearted joviality Mark associated with you, hinting that you weren’t as mad as you were relieved that nothing bad had happened.

“Yeah,” he joined in with a lukewarm laugh, the lines of his face betraying his worry, “again, sorry.”

You decided to not just let it go as you may have in the past, the dream last night eating away at you. “Why’d you leave?”

He closed his laptop lid and shuffled over on the couch, motioning for you to join him. Once you were seated next to him, he shifted his body to face you and began to trace delicate patterns up and down the cloth of your leg. “I woke up this morning to alarms and alerts on my computer. Somebody was targeting me, threatening me. Saying they’d worked out a way to track my IP and server and that they were on their way. I had to get out, even if I didn’t really believe them. I was hardly going to lead them right to where you were.”

The explanation didn’t sit well with you, reminding you overtly of your dream. The reality that people were after Mark was becoming more and more present.

“I’ve been thinking,” Mark began, snagging your attention.

“Oh no, that’s never good.”

He gave you a flat look, “Shut up, I’m serious. I’ve been thinking that… maybe it would be best if we broke this off. That you moved out or something.”

You felt you face immediately fall into a scowl. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, Y/N,” Mark tried again, his normally sweet face hardened as he attempted to convey the gravity he felt the situation deserved, “I’m not being ridiculous. What I’m saying makes sense. I’m putting you in danger. I knew I would from the get go, but it’s only getting worse and worse—”

You cut him off by climbing into his lap and placing your hands on the soft skin of his cheeks, forcing him to meet your gaze. “I’m going to be selfish, and you’re going to let me be selfish, because you’re the kindest person I know. I have to stay with you, otherwise I’ll be miserable and sick with worry and there will be a huge Mark-shaped gap in my life that I won’t be able to fill. So, please, let me be selfish. Don’t push me away.”

He grimaced, but his hands came down to rest on your knees, rubbing them affectionately.

“It’s not worth it,” he tried, “you’re being too narrow minded about this. You don’t understand that real danger that I put you in every second that you’re with me.”

You shook his head gently and ever so slightly in your grip, desperate to reassure him. “Get off your high horse. The most danger that I’m in when I’m with you is the possibility of food poisoning. Apart from when it concerns food, I trust you with my life. Mark Lee, get that through your thick skull. I trust you. I love you.”

He blinked at you, before leaning forwards and pressing his forehead to yours. You’d exchanged those words once of twice, but they were still rare and managed to provoke flurries of butterflies in his stomach.

His shoulders drooped in what you took as a sign of resignation, and his arms curled around your waist and hugged you tight.

“Ok,” he breathed.

“You understand now?”

“I understand.”

You combed your fingers through his dark hair, watching as his eyes closed in contentment at the feeling. You had meant what you said. There was no peace without this boy by your side. He had managed to infiltrate every aspect of your being, and you didn’t mind in the slightest.


End file.
